"Walt dreams of killing his overbearing wife. When she goes away on an unscheduled trip, he fakes her death. Unfortunately. she fails to return from said trip, and the police get involved."
Unfortunately, I picked the wrong Highsmith book. The one where the lead character stages his wife's murder on the day she disappears for real is A Suspension of Mercy. So much for my mini themed read of the same storyline with vastly different treatment.
The Blunderer is a similar story of a man suspected of his wife's murder, but has a very different central plotline and no resemblance to the plot of Wilt in the slightest.
The book opens with a surprisingly brutal murder by Highsmith's standards, where a man follows the Greyhound bus his wife is riding, drags her off into the nearby bushes and beats her to death.
Walt is going through marriage difficulties. They no longer love each other. She has grown paranoid and suicidal. He has ceased to care about her. when he reads in the papers about the murder from the opening chapter, he follows the bus his wife was on with dreams of committing a copycat crime. He's seen by several people at the rest stop, and drives home again. When his wife's battered body is found at the bottom of the cliff nearby, his lies to the police about his actions that night throw serious doubt on his innocence. When he crosses paths with the murderer from the book's opening, things get progressively worse.
One of the reviews on my copy of this book says "Highsmith writes about men like a spider writing about flies" and I can't think of a better description.
If you like characters who plan carefully and don't make mistakes, this is not the book for you. The title should be a clue. Walt makes mistake after mistake. He digs himself deeper and deeper into a world of pain. It's almost impossible to keep sympathy with him, but his story is compelling. The brutal cop chasing after both Walt and the murderer from the first chapter is more of a villain than the murderer.
This is a chilling psychological thriller and one of my favourite of her books.
Despite my mistaking the storyline, I'm really happy to have reread this one even if I didn't mean to. Her books are always densely written, full of psychological depth, and totally captivating. Her word choice is always spot on. The fraying of their relationship in the first few chapters is superbly and subtly portrayed.
A masterclass in putting the reader directly in the heads of a cast of characters. It's a train crash in slow motion almost. As bad as things get, we're compelled to read on to see if it can possibly improve, or is the light at the end of the tunnel just a freight train about to mow everyone into bloody pulp on the tracks?
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